Tallahassee
by unbearablelightness
Summary: I had written this prior to the new episode. My take on another possible outcome of Kathy's presence. Jim/Pam, Season 7


_**Tallahassee**_

Three weeks. It was a long time to be away from home. Period. It was an even longer time to be away from your wife, leaving her to grapple with a newborn and a toddler.

Jim was racked with guilt stepping onto the plane, landing in Florida. Dehydrated and damp with sweat, he groaned with discomfort waiting for Robert's car service to pick them up. He groaned with discomfort _all throughout_ their executive planning meetings, spending the long afternoons counting the speckles in the ceiling tiles.

He'd forgotten his cell phone charger at home. For the first couple of days he hadn't realized and texted Pam with leisure. He was on the yellow bars, slowly running out of juice when he scoured his suitcase looking for it. It wasn't there. Jim knocked on all the doors of his Dunder-Mifflin colleges, desperate for a Motorola charger.

No luck.

He switched his phone to energy save mode and made daily calls to Pam and the kids from his hotel phone. The afternoons tripled in length without his wife to text, without receiving picture messages of Cece pretending to cook a pancake breakfast for Phillip on her Fisher-Price kitchen set.

.

Week two was when everything went to hell. The group had gone out for drinks the first couple of nights. Erin and Kathy had been particularly adamant that everyone drink up, buying rounds of shots and drinks the entire night. By eleven o'clock, Erin had peeled away from the crowd with Kathy, talking intensely. Andy came up a couple of times. She cried, fumed, laughed – ending the chat with a tequila shot and a grin.

Jim held onto his phone, waiting for the vibrate in his pocket to hear from Pam. The beers he'd had, in combination with shots from Erin and Kathy, had heightened his emotional state.

It was 11:45 with no time difference between them. Jim was distracted throughout Stanley's story, only throwing in the occasional "get out" and "is that right" to indicate engagement. He took his phone out of his pocket, slide it open to see if he had missed any calls. Nothing. Just a flashing red bar, warning him of a low battery.

"Jeez, expecting news?"

A huge gust of perfume. Something overly sweet, intrusive. Kathy had sat down beside Jim, wobbling, with a vodka cranberry in her hand.

"Ah, just waiting to hear from Pam." He shrugged, and took a sip of his beer.

"Right, Pam." Kathy nodded.

She was drunk. Her make-up was slightly smudged and her lips stained in the middle from cranberry juice.

"How is_ Pam, _anyway? Since the baby and everything?"

How was Pam? Stressed. Tired. Exhausted, more like it. Strapped for money, apprehensive about Cece's new daycare, constantly on the phone with her mother, asking questions. So, so exhausted.

"You know, busy." Jim was evasive. Personal details, he felt, were nobody's business.

Kathy nodded over-emphatically. "Oh I bet. Two babies really must run a woman down."

Jim took another sip from his beer, unsure of how to respond. "Well it is a lot of work for both of us. Cece just discovered 'no' so we're dealing with that." That, Jim felt, was a nice capper to the conversation of his family situation with a relative stranger.

Kathy didn't think so. "Yeah but at least you get to come to work and hang out with us everyday."

"Pam's back working, too."

"Yeah but you know…" Kathy waved her arms, looking for the words. She didn't finish her sentence. She just leaned in close, resting her arm on the table. Her tank top gaped open in the front, her eyes were glassy.

Jim leaned back. Tried to create a distance between them, tried to invite himself back into Stanley's dialogue with Dwight. No such luck. Stanley was on a rant, Dwight was in intense agreement. Solidarity there. No room for Jim in the conversation.

Jim looked across the table. Ryan was texting someone, presumably Kelly. Erin was at the bar, chatting with the bartender.

Kathy's gaze was strangling.

"I'm going to run and call -" Before he could finish, his phone vibrated. Incoming call: Pam. Jim answered right away, relief flooding him. "Hey babe!" He shifted away from Kathy to better hear his wife's voice.

"_Hey Pam_!"

Kathy's voice was loud, wild, clearly audible. Pam heard. Kathy was leaning over Jim, trying to speak into the phone. She said again, "Hey Pam!"

"Who's that?"

Jim arched his back away from Kathy, trying to create a barrier of silence. "That's just Kathy. So how are things with -" He was cut off by Kathy leaning over him further, greeting Pam loudly once more. She had herself pressed up against Jim, her arm around his shoulder, trying to speak into the receiver of the phone.

"Jim, I can't really hear you." Was all Pam said.

The bar suddenly felt so loud. Kathy was pressed against his turned back, acting like a teenager. He couldn't tell if Pam was speaking or silent. He kept saying her name: "Pam? Pam? Pam, I can't hear you…" He arched further away from Kathy. "Pam?"

"Jim?" Her voice seemed so far away, so muffled. "Jim?"

His phone died. He tried saying her name a couple more times before resigning to the black screen on his phone. "Dammit. My phone died."

Kathy was still draped over Jim.

Uncomfortable, Jim stood and pressed his phone to his ear. "I'm going to try to call her back."

He grabbed his light jacket that had been hanging off the back of his chair as quickly as he could; not able to ignore the fact that Kathy was staring at him, piercingly, a smug look on her face.

.

His phone was officially dead. He looked for a pay phone in the bar, but it seemed as though no such thing existed.

He felt strangely emotional. A call from Pam was always welcomed, but this time their miscommunication felt fatal. Too big of a deal to chalk up to a dying phone battery.

Objectively attractive.

That phrase was stuck in his head. It was how he'd described Kathy when Pam had been intensely jealous of her. Objectively attractive.

.

Erin stumbled out of the bathroom while Jim was in the hallway searching for a pay phone. She dragged him to the bar, bought two shots of Jack Daniels and forced him to cheers to the liberation of Florida. Erin was speaking on and on about a girl she met who was her television soul mate in the washroom. She had her cell phone in her hand and repeatedly was flipping it open to check for, what Jim assumed, was a new text message.

"Can I borrow your phone really quickly?"

Erin looked down at the black device. "Oh um…" She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm kind of expecting a text response." She leaned in close and whispered: "I texted Andy like three hours ago. Do you think he got it? Why hasn't he responded? I mean, maybe he's with Jessica or something, I'm not sure, but it's been a long time."

She went on and on, completely nervous.

Jim got it.

Had there not been a time in his life when the anxiety of Pam replying to a text message, email or returning a call, had killed him? That feeling of wondering if they saw the message, decided to wait an appropriate amount of time to respond so as not to seem clingy, and then reply? Or that feeling of wondering if she got your funny picture message of a dog while she was with her fiancé for the weekend? The instant creation of an inside joke that would be excellent material to bring up on Monday when you saw her again. Whether or not they think of you, or could feel you thinking about them?

Jim got that. He understood where Erin was. The vice grip on a telephone, waiting for any sign of communication from someone? He'd been there. He was, to a different degree, there right now. He patted Erin on the shoulder and made a bee-line to the street to hail a cab.

He had to call Pam.

.

A six minute cab ride got him where he needed to be. He felt around his pocket for his room key, buzzing from the alcohol and a desire to hear Pam's soft, quiet, tired "hello?" To hear her voice change, just a little bit, at the thrill of speaking to Jim.

He pressed "close door" on the elevator maybe ten times until he finally ascended up to his room.

.

Shortly behind him in the hallway was Kathy. Out of breath, wasted, panting, she ran up to him. In the hallway of their hotel. "Jim!"

He doubled over in surprise. She had on even fewer clothes that he last saw her. Somehow she'd ditched the cardigan she'd been wearing and tied her hair up.

He wanted Pam.

"Hey where did you _go _dude? Erin said you booked it after she started talking about Andy."

"You followed me here?"

She ignored him and took a step closer. "It's barely passed midnight and you're calling it a night, old man?"

Jim poised his key card at the door. "Well you know."

She leaned in further.

No distance between them.

He had to call Pam. He needed to hear her voice.

"I thought we were going to hang out." Her voice dripped with sensuality. Languid, slow.

Jim tried to increase the distance between them.

"I left to call Pam. Our conversation got interrupted before and I want to see how…" She interrupted him with a whiney: "Oh _PAM_!" She threw her head back. "You're calling your _wife t_o check in! I see. God, that woman has a firm grip on you, huh? Demanding hourly calls while you're in fricken _Florida_!"

Jim's initial thought was: how dare she?

But he didn't act on it. He slid the key card in the door and pushed it open, hoping to escape as peacefully as possible. He just wanted to talk to his wife. To calm any uneasiness she had from their prior conversation with Kathy's belligerent interruption.

Kathy followed him in.

"Listen, I'm calling Pam, can you step out?"

Kathy slinked over to the bed. "Call her. I'll be here."

That, and probably everything far earlier than her sliding onto his bed, was enough. He lost it. "Get out." His demand was firm, no bull shit. He held up the receiver of the hotel phone to indicate yes, he was dialing his wife. His wife. He wanted to hear her voice with his entire body. He wanted to hear Cece's ramblings. Hell, wake Phillip. Let Jim hear his wailing. He wanted his family, not this sloppy woman sprawled on his bed.

"Okay, okay, okay, okay." Kathy held up her hands, innocently. "Call the old ball and chain."

Jim paused with the phone to his hear, a look of pure irritation on his face. He glanced at the door, gesturing that she leave.

"Alright, alright." Kathy stood up, her confidence fading.

Kathy lingered.

"Let me talk to my wife. Leave."

And with that, the cursory relationship he had formed with Kathy in her stay at Dunder-Mifflin had dissolved. Completely vanished.

Jim dialled home.

.

The three weeks were over.

The last week of the trip, after Kathy had openly made herself available to Jim, had been stunted. Jim had called Pam that night, keeping their conversation brief so as not to raise suspicion. He just listened to her talk about the day, soaking in every word she said, ever intonation of her voice, every pause for breath, every shuffle in the background. He could tell that she was in the living room watching some sort of movie. He could hear the TV in the background.

Pam had really been into watching foreign films since Philip's birth, lavishing in the cultural escape from Dora and Elmo. Jim spoke little French but wanted, so badly, with his entire existence, to be on that couch with her, baby monitor on the coffee table, with air-popped popcorn and half-finished tea, falling asleep.

Their conversation that night couldn't have been more than twenty minutes, but in those twenty minutes, Jim absorbed as much of home as he could.

.

He had avoided Kathy. Not in a rude, obvious way, just simply stayed out of her way. He hung around Stanley and Erin a lot, finding himself enjoying their company more and more with each passing day. He had even gone golfing with Stanley to humour him.

Jim noted Erin's attachment to her phone, constantly peeking at it with disappointment.

Kathy made little effort to speak to Jim, except for the morning after. She came up to the breakfast table in the hotel the morning after, casual, and engaged Jim in what he felt now was flirtatious banter. Jim's response was minimal, and he excused himself right away to walk around the grounds of the hotel a little before they met at Sabre headquarters.

On their last evening at a Sabre Store gala event and the naming of the VP, Jim remained as evasive as possible toward Kathy. He was successful for the most part, until partway into the evening. She sat down next to him at the table, broke the ice with idle chit chat, and said: "Listen, Jim, about the other night…"

Jim shook his head, indicating that he didn't want to talk about it.

Kathy went on. "I'm sorry. I must have misread your signals."

Signals? What signals?

"What?"

"I mean, that stuff happens. Signals get crossed."

Calmly, Jim said: "I didn't send out any signals."

Kathy rolled her eyes. "Jim, come on. You're a pretty flirtatious guy. I mean, you are. But all I'm saying is I must have misinterpreted that as you being into me, and I'm sorry."

Silence. Jim literally bit his tongue, not wanting to say anything to cause a scene, he said this: "Kathy, I didn't flirt with you. At all. Never once was I intending to flirt with you. Ever. I love Pam. I absolutely adore her and _have_ adored her since the second I met her. She and our kids mean everything to me, so please, let it go and leave me alone."

His tone was calm and firm. She nodded slowly, with wide eyes, gulping that information down. Jim said nothing more. He didn't feel he needed to further justify or articulate his feeling for him family.

She pressed her lips together and turned away.

Jim stood up to congratulate Dwight on his being declared VP of the Sabre Stores, and moved to join him at his table with Gabe for the rest of the evening.

.

Jim read on the plan ride. He listened to music and chatted a little with Ryan. He counted down the hours of the flight longingly, checking his watch constantly during the flight.

Finally, they touched ground. He waited for the plane to empty, rushed through the airport, dying to get to baggage claim. The Dunder-Mifflin staff stuck together, languidly walking through the airport, no one visibly excited to be home. Jim walked briskly. He scanned the crow surrounding the baggage claim.

Carousel four. She was there, waiting by herself, no kids. She was leaning against the wall, scratching her eyebrow. Jim booked it toward Pam, enveloping her before he even reached her. She stiffened in shock, resting her head on her shoulder and laughing a "Hey". Jim held her, pulling her into him, feeling her soft cotton sweater, the smell of her rosemary shampoo, the powdery baby lotion she borrowed from Philip; the flowing curve of her postnatal body, her engorged breasts, her soft skin. Jim felt it all. He kissed her, fully, pushing her back against the wall, trying with everything to withhold the energy he truly felt around her at that moment.

.

Marriages were not all show. Working at a desk next to someone with whom you have a whole exterior life with does not warrant a grand parade of the intense love in your gut. Two babies were stressful. They were taxing little bundles of love and energy thefts, requiring constant care and two sleep schedules. Days at the office were tiring; financial stresses and everyday worries all contribute to your daily actions.

But at the centre of it, Jim figured, was an intense love. A completely whole, uninterrupted love for this woman who picked him up at the airport in black jeans and her favorite pregnancy sweater, her curly hair knotted back into a ponytail. This woman who, now his wife and the co-creator of his children, had always been the subject of his admiration and affection. At one point in time, he'll never forget, a mere look up from reception from her sent his mind into a spiral of: "Does she have feelings for me?" and "What should I read into that?". Those days had gone and morphed into their present status: "It's your turn to change Phillip" and chaotic preparation to take their babies to finger painting and art lessons at the community centre for, what Pam hoped, would be a little bit of "culture". Their lives now were putting Cece to bed and watching NBA highlights with Philip in a onesie, curled up on Jim's chest.

That core, that little nucleated family, was what mattered. A total trust and devotion to one another.

.

Jim picked up his bags from the carousel and walked to the car, his hand firmly interlocked with Pam's.


End file.
